‘Flying? What, over the alps? Isn’t that very dangerous?’
‘Yes, very. I might crash. And if so I will not be interfering in any of your cases again.’
‘Don’t say that.’ He sounded abashed. ‘I don’t want to lose you, Miss Fisher, I’m just asking for your cooperation.’
‘I tell you what, Jack dear, I think I do know who did it, and how, and when I get back I shall tell you all about it.’
‘Promise?’
‘On my word.’
Jack Robinson had a high opinion of the honour of women, especially Phryne’s. He had never known her to break her word.
‘Very well, Miss Fisher. I’ll see you when you get back.’
‘Well, Jack, good luck with the case. Oh, by the way, I meant to ask—what about Miss Shore, the dead man’s partner? How is she?’
‘She’s been released, Miss, from hospital. She didn’t see nothing useful. Such a to-do I never saw!’ Jack Robinson chuckled. ‘Her mother and three sisters and relatives all over the place all refusing to let me speak to “poor little Pansy” until she was quite better, and poor little Pansy collapsing back against her pillow and promising to go home and be a good girl in future. She wasn’t close to the dead man, Miss Fisher. She answered an advertisement in the paper for a partner. Says he promised her ten quid and half the prize if they won.’
‘Put me down for the ten quid,’ said Phryne.
‘No need, Miss, a friend of Bernard Stevens has paid it, the one who wasn’t in any of them photos what never went through the evidence register and you didn’t return to him. He made it twenty quid and pleased to do it, by the look of him. And paid her hospital bill. Nice young gentleman, you’d never think he was . . .’
‘What he is. Good. I like my loose ends all tied up. Well, if I don’t see you again, Jack, it’s been nice working with you.’
‘Don’t say that, Miss Fisher. You’ll be back.’
‘Is that one of those Sherlock Holmes intuitions?’
‘Yes,’ said Detective Inspector Robinson firmly. ‘It is. Happy flying,’ he added, and rang off.
Mrs Butler came out to the car with a wicker picnic hamper and a thermos flask.
‘Black coffee as you asked, Miss, and the sandwiches and so on. I’ve put in that big box of chocolates and some biscuits.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Butler, I’m sure they’ll be lovely.’ Mrs Butler stepped off the running board and surveyed Phryne in her flying gear with an indulgent eye. ‘You have a nice fly, Miss, and come back safe,’ she said.
‘Off you go, Mr B.’
Two men manoeuvred the Moth
Rigel
out of the hangar and
onto the smooth tarmac.
‘Well, old girl,’ said Bunji Ross, ‘I’ve taken down your engine and rebuilt it. There was a split pin which some idiot replaced with a bit of wire that was just about to shear. You have new spark plugs and she’s tuned to a hair. Now, you will remember about not flying in cloud, won’t you? Get above or below it. Got the maps? Good.’
Bunji boosted Phryne into the cockpit of the two-seater Gipsy Moth. Its blue and yellow paint gleamed in the pale sunlight. Phryne packed her case and assorted goodies into the empty copilot’s seat and went into her preflight checks. ‘Never take a machine into the air unless you are confident that it will fly,’ warned the
Regulations for Operation of Aircraft,
and Phryne checked that her flaps flapped and her compass was working.
‘Switch off,’ she yelled above the sudden roar. ‘Goodbye, Dot! Be good, and don’t worry! Suck in! Give my best regards to Hugh, won’t you? One, two three, go!’ she shrieked. Bunji spun the propeller, the engine caught and turned over, and the Moth called after a star trundled forward, got up speed, and leapt up into the air.
Dot watched as Phryne took the little plane into a wide circle, her leather-helmeted and goggled head still visible. She wondered if that would be the last anyone saw of Phryne.
Mr Butler put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come along, Dot, let’s go home. She’ll be all right. Terribly lucky, she is. After all, she’s got us, eh? Come on, now. Home we go and a nice cuppa,’ said Mr Butler, who was convinced that tea was the cure for most female ills, from miscarriage to bankruptcy. Dot tore her gaze away from the sky and climbed into the big car. There was now nothing at all she could do to help Phryne except to obey her last command, which was not to worry. Absurd. How could she not worry?
Mr Butler, at least, drove like a sensible citizen, and gave Dot no further shocks on the way home.
Up in the air, sky high,
sky high.
Gilbert and Sullivan
Patience
The tricky part about flying, Phryne thought as the wind tore past her goggles and the earth released the plane, was taking off and landing. Once in the air, a Gipsy Moth would continue until it ran out of fuel or met very adverse conditions. A Moth did not lumber into the air, dragging itself up in defiance of gravity, but side-slipped the clutch of the earth and leapt into the embrace of the air like a dog jumping up onto a loved master’s chest. A Moth fooled the force that pulled everything down, rather than defied it. She climbed to five thousand feet and turned the plane north and a little east, taking her sightings from the ground. It was a perfect day for flying, such cloud as there was plumped high, white, and right out of reach. The ground was clearer than print. Little cars crawled like beetles across the slow earth; small roads like ribbons snaked below.
‘I’m out of all of that,’ Phryne sang to herself, ‘far above all that striving and all those people; high up in the sky, and nothing else aloft, either; what could be better?’
She flew directly north-east over the patch of forest and water that was Kinglake before she reached for her thermos and let go the controls.
Rigel
flew straight and level while she poured her coffee and drank it in a mood of quiet exultation.
Phryne took the craft up to seven thousand feet, where the ground came closer; she was flying over mountains.
‘That must be Mount Despair. If it is Mount Mitchell, I’m off course. I shall know soon; I should cross the River Acheron about now – and there it is. I wonder who named these places? They must have been lost. Poor things. This is a terribly big country, isn’t it?’ Phryne usually talked to herself in the air. ‘Aha. That huge big stretch of water must be Lake Eildon, and Mansfield is at the furthest bit. I hope there is somewhere to land there. Shell should have warned the locals. I wonder if they’ve seen a plane before? Goodness. The surrounding hills are rather steep, aren’t they? Up a bit,
Rigel,
my dear.’
She flew higher over Lake Eildon, and people in boats waved as she passed.
‘Just the one lump and that should be Mansfield. Good. I think I’ll try following the road.’
She flew along the looping string which was the road, and was surprised by an abrupt mountain, the road cutting deeply through it. She flicked the little plane up into the sky again, passed the mountain, dropped again to the peaceful township of Mansfield, and circled until she sighted a drooping windsock and a long path cleared in a paddock.
‘Down we go,’ she told herself firmly. ‘Landing is just the same as taking off, in reverse, that’s what Bunji says.’ There was no discernible wind and she made her approach from the east. There were a lot of people on the ground, including every child within a hundred miles, and Phryne hoped that she was not about to make an idiot of herself in front of the entire population of central Victoria.
Rigel
dipped, losing speed. Phryne estimated that she must be getting low on fuel. At least, if she crashed, there was less chance of fire. She came in like a duck landing, swooping and wobbling, until the wheels touched the very beginning of the cleared path and the machine ran smoothly to a textbook halt.
It was a lot better than most of Phryne’s landings. One of her instructors had told her that any landing was good which did not break the plane, and Phryne’s landings definitely came into that category.
Part of her problem, she considered, was that she didn’t want to land. Flying was as close as she came to pure pleasure in which no one but herself need be considered.
She switched off the engine, and the propeller spun to a halt. Phryne jumped down, a little stiff, and decided that the still air posed no threat and that she did not need to tie
Rigel
down with her tent-pegs and ropes. A gust of ground wind could turn the plane over and break her frame; but here it was still and hot.
Phryne pulled off her helmet to catch the first child who belted past her to get into the plane.
‘Hold it!’ she said sternly. ‘You can look, but don’t touch. One kick of those boots could go right through my wings!’ The child turned in her grasp, hearing her voice.
‘Mum!’ he screamed. ‘Mum! It’s a lady!’
Phryne put him down. The crowd was approaching.
‘My God,’ said a fat storekeeper, wiping his hands on his white apron, ‘the nipper’s right. It is a woman.’
‘What do you mean, “it”?’ asked Phryne. ‘Is this a nice welcome from the city of Mansfield?’
‘Beg pardon, Miss, we wasn’t expecting a lady, that’s all,’ said a tall, slow-speaking young man. ‘Your fuel’s arrived, Miss. Shall we bring it over? If you’d like a cuppa, the Missus has it all ready.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Phryne with feeling. She had not been looking forward to carrying all those fuel cans. ‘Thanks, I’d love some tea. Phryne Fisher.’ She offered her hand. He took it and shook it heartily.
‘Tim Wallace. Glad to meet yer. This is Miss Fisher, Mum,’ he added to a stout woman, who smiled and pushed back her straying grey hair.
‘Nice to see you, Miss. This way.’ She conducted Phryne off the path into the shade of trees. A fire had been lit and a billy was boiling. The rest of the crowd divided equally between Phryne and the plane as chief attractions.
‘Mr Wallace, can you keep the kids off the bus? They are welcome to look, but she’s fragile,’ said Phryne, and the tall man grinned, grabbing a running child under one arm.
‘She’ll be apples,’ he promised, and Phryne left it in his capable hands.
Mrs Wallace did not ask how Phryne took her tea, but pushed into her hand a large tin mug, already loaded with sugar and milk. Phryne bent and stretched, getting the kinks out of her spine, watched by a silent mob.
‘What’s it like, up there in the sky?’ a child asked. Phryne gulped some tea and smiled.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Lovely and high and far away.’
‘Is she fast?’ asked the boy.
‘Cruising speed of eighty miles an hour. What’s the weather been like here?’
‘Clear and hot,’ said a farmer. ‘We need rain.’
‘What about the mountains?’
‘Clear as well. Buller sent to say that cloud is at ten thousand feet,’ said a man who was evidently the postmaster. ‘Should stay clear, but the Snowies are funny. Can blizzard without any warning. You want to be careful, Miss.’
‘I shall.’ She smiled. Mrs Wallace patted her, unexpectedly.
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ she said combatively, as though defying public opinion. ‘The things girls can do today. And them things, them planes, they could do a lot for us. Get supplies in when snow cuts the roads. Get sick people out. I think you’re very brave, Miss, and good luck to yer.’
The watching men muttered, but no one seemed willing to take Mrs Wallace on in argument.
Phryne smiled. ‘When I come back I’ll have time to give someone a ride,’ she said mischievously. ‘Who shall it be?’
There was an uneasy shuffle, as of people walking backwards. Tim Wallace, who had supervised the loading of the fuel, came to tell Phryne her plane was free of children and full of petrol, and called, ‘Me!’ to his compatriots’ evident relief.
‘Yair, Tim’ll go up with yer,’ said Mrs Wallace proudly.
‘Thanks for the tea, and I’ll be back soon,’ said Phryne, shaking Mrs Wallace’s hand and walking back to
Rigel.
‘Now, can I have one helper and everyone else get right back. Away you go, kids, this prop is not for decoration, you know. All right.’
She climbed up into the cockpit and pulled on her helmet. ‘You stand this side of the prop, Mr Wallace, and when I say go, you pull it down towards you and get your hands out of the way very smartly. All right? Switch on.’ She did so, and listened to the revs build up, looking ahead at the fence at the end of her runway and hoping that she would be airborne before she met it. ‘Suck in, one, two, three—go!’ Tim Wallace swung the prop, retaining his hands, to Phryne’s relief, and the Moth bounced forward, wobbled a little over a few stones, then jumped up into the sky.
Phryne soared up to circle at a safe height, waved, consulted her compass, and flew east and a little south, straight for the mountains which loomed high, dark and still crowned with snow, directly in her path.
If I’m feeling tomorrow like I feel today
I’m gonna pack my trunk and I’m gonna make
my getaway.
WC Handy
‘St Louis Blues’